Pursuing a Birth Injury Case

Transcript

REBECCA WALSH: Within medical malpractice, really birth injury is a subspecialty. There are some lawyers who dabble in it but it’s important if you want to get the best possible attorneys you can you make sure that they have experience handling birth injury cases, they know what the law is, they know what the medicine is because frequently birth injury cases are the type that judges and defense attorneys attack on whether or not the experts have the necessary qualifications to testify.

Considering the law in this state, you have to file the notice and wait six months. When that six months is up, we would then file the lawsuit. Currently, while the case is in suit, it takes an additional 18 to 24 months to get through the discovery process, the settlement process, and ultimately to a trial if your case were to go to trial. Infants have until their tenth birthday to file suit but in Michigan you have to file a document or a letter called a Notice of Intent before you can file suit.

So really the statute of limitations in Michigan is when the child is nine and a half years old, but keep in mind that there is investigation that goes on before that that could take months. So don’t wait until the last minute or in all likelihood you’ll be–your case could get thrown out because the statute has run. In addition to that, if the mom is injured, she has a two-year statute of limitations to file any claims for her injuries.